Status: IN
The forward-only design principle extends beyond normal state evolution (monotonic cursors, irreversible window finalization, maximum-progress pipeline branching) to failure handling: retry logic escalates transient failures to permanent outcomes via exponential backoff rather than attempting rollback, treating failure resolution as another forward-only state transition that produces irrevocable results.
The d3 forward-only node covers normal state progression; the d1 retry node covers failure progression — the emergent property is that both follow the same no-rollback principle
Depends on (SL): forward-only-design-prevents-regression-and-maximizes-progress, retry-escalates-to-permanent-failure